


the slow dance of the infinite stars

by spacenarwhal



Category: Daredevil (TV), Stardust (2007)
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, M/M, Slow Burn, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26687674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: Once upon a time, in the city of New York, there was a boy named Matthew.Some might say that young Matthew was born under an unhappy star. Or at least they would, if people in that part of the world still believed in such a thing.Those who knew him and knew of his story were more likely to say, “That kid’s shit out of luck.”[Or: The the Stardust!AU I started writing, like, 4 years ago and am finally getting around to finishing, I guess.]
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 36





	1. A Most Inauspicious Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Lo! Gather around children for a good yarn!
> 
> Many moons ago, there was a prompt on the Daredevil Kinkmeme that was like 'Stardust but make it modern" and I was most intrigued as someone who loves revented fairytales. So I started writing this wild mess, heavily inspired by my love of the film _Stardust_ (hello swashbuckling Charlie Cox) and _The Princess Bride_ and _The Lord of the Rings_. 
> 
> I can't say its any good, but it was, and still is, very fun to write. And because this year has been a trash fire mess and I am constantly overwhelmed with dread and rage, I figured why the fuck not work on this some more and actually finish it?
> 
> Title from the novel Neil Gaiman, _Stardust_.

Once upon a time, in the city of New York, there was a boy named Matthew. 

Some might say that young Matthew was born under an unhappy star. Or at least they would, if people in that part of the world still believed in such a thing. 

Those who knew him and knew of his story were more likely to say, “That kid’s shit out of luck.” 

At least that’s what his mentor, an old unpleasant fellow who went only as Stick often said whenever Matt expressed anything that could be construed as a regular emotional response to the circumstances of his unfortunate life. 

Blinded when he was only nine in an accident of Fate or chance, orphaned less than a year later by the same designs and sent to live with his maternal grandmother, Matt Murdock’s short live had certainly been strewn with tragedy. 

Even the arrival of Stick when Matt was barely more than eleven and the commencement of his training in the secret arts of Stick’s phantom order could not be harkened as a turn towards a better fate. 

For Matt had a secret, one that lived inside his very skin, unknown to all who knew him except for Stick. Not even his late father had been privy to the secret Matt kept, for you see (as Matt no longer could and never would again), the very accident that had taken Matt’s sight had bestowed on him enhanced senses that allowed a different kind of sight.

“Don’t get cocky kid, you’re not that special.” Stick liked to remind him. 

In this regard Stick was not entirely wrong. For just a few blocks and a world away there was an entire troop of players who knew nothing of Matt Murdock, his tragic life, his secret abilities or his desire to prove himself. 

These were people who had all been cast as leads in stories of their very own you see, and so had little to no reason to give any thought to an orphaned blind boy in the mortal sphere of New York City no matter how excellent his hearing or how well he could decipher every single ingredient in a scoop of ice cream. 

(That would soon change but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.)

For now it was only Matt Murdock, alone on a rooftop in the middle of New York City on an island some maps have labelled Manhattan. 

The air was chilled, as it tended to be at that time of the year. Matt was listening to the city beneath him, the bustling bodies and their beating hearts, reverberating throughout the air. The city was choked with sounds and smells and textures and tastes. Matt had spent years cataloguing each, committing them all to memory. 

Stick spoke of those people, normal, everyday civilians, living blissfully in ignorance with a kind of afterthought derision. But Matt found them fascinating, going about their lives every day, still capable of caring about things such as money and education and careers and each other. He wondered what it would be like to live a life like that. Sometimes, at night, he would climb up to the rooftop of his grandmother’s building and sit on the ledge of the high up building. He would listen to the chaotic whir of sound all around him, the sirens racing back and forth between the buildings and allow himself to imagine stories for them all. What they were doing, where they were going, who they were rushing to meet. No one in Matt’s stories was ever alone. He wouldn’t allow it. 

It was this kind of unchecked sentimentality that worried Stick, in so much as he ever allowed himself to worry about another human being, least someone accuse him of weakness. Stick saw in Matt the potential for an excellent soldier, provided he could wean himself of the remnants of his childish softness, that even the fiercest of Stick’s training had not been able to strip away.

It was with this in mind that Stick sought Matt out that damp, cold night that foretold more rain, breaking a previously unspoken agreement to leave Matt to his night’s watch undisturbed. (Not, he would argue, if anyone were ever to ask, because he liked Matt enough to allow him it, but because even he could not be expected to hold his student’s hand at all hours of the day.)

Matt’s back went rigid when he heard Stick’s approach, his footsteps splashing through the puddles collected on the rooftop. Stick sat wordlessly at Matt’s side, his long thin legs dangling over the side of the building. For as long as Matt had known him, Stick had been an overwhelming guiding presence of indeterminable age. Any attempts Matt had made to learn more about him had been rebuffed sharply, as had all of Matt’s efforts to share any part of himself. It had been years since Matt had last tried, afraid of pushing away the only person the world who saw him as more than the sum of his tragedies. 

Now, Matt sat silent, awaiting instruction or a sharp rebuke, which ever it was Stick had come to deliver. 

“You’ll be eighteen tomorrow kid.” Stick said without greeting. A hot bolt of surprise cut through Matt to know that Stick had any notion of how old Matt was, to say nothing of the day he was born on. “I’ve taught you just about everything I can teach you.” 

Even as Stick said those words there was a shift in the air, a kind of heat that descended from above and rippled across every surface like a wave washes over a sandy shore. Matt sat straighter still, listened to Stick’s almost imperceptible shift as he did the same. They were both listening, searching the world in every way they could for whatever it was that had befallen them. As usual, it was Stick who solved the riddle first. 

“What is it?” Matt risked asking, keeping his voice steady, his bearings firm, desperate to impress upon Stick the full weight of his conviction and not make known the seedling of trepidation that still took root inside him even now. 

“That Matty," Stick answered, grin so sharp it could have cut through the dark, “Is gonna be your last test.” 

-

It was a star. 

That was what Matt and Stick had felt up on that rooftop in the city of New York that night, a star making its way towards the earth, having been struck loose from its natural place in the sky by an unintended blow of luck. Whether that luck was of the bad sort or not was yet to be decided (and would in fact be largely contested by many for centuries to come). 

What that star was made of was known to all. Like all others of its kind it was a body of celestial light, comprised of helium and hydrogen according to some, or perhaps something else, a deeper and older magic than ever humankind could try to understand. It had spent its life presiding benevolently in the heavens hundreds of millions light years away, watching over the everyday events of our tiny blue planet since it first cleared the wreath of noxious fumes that had kept the sun at bay for eons prior to the birth of humankind. 

Who that star was was an entirely different matter altogether. 

-

“A star?” Matt asked, unable to keep the edge of incredulity out of his voice. It was only a deep and certain knowledge that Stick’s sense of humor was far darker when not completely nonexistent that kept Matt from asking if he was joking. 

Stick never joked. 

“Did I stutter?” Stick answered shortly, and Matt’s teeth snapped in his haste to regain the previous silence. 

“You want me to get you a fallen star.” Matt said after a brief pause, during which Stick didn’t recant or taunt him for believing it was a genuine request. It was more a statement than a question now that it was apparent Stick really did expect Matt to collect a fallen star as his final test. Matt set his shoulders. 

He thought of his entire life prior to that moment—watching his father practice in the ring, the accident, the silence left in his father’s wake, the overwhelming loneliness he’d lived in until there was Stick. He hadn’t done away with the loneliness but he had made it tolerable, just as he had made all the other aspects of Matt’s new life tolerable. He’d given Matt the city, its rooftops and alleys, its darkest corners and shadowed streets, had taught him how to leap without fear of what might be waiting in the never-ending dark. Matt understood he was only as good as what he could do. For the last eight years he had devoted himself to making his body a tool worthy of use. What was one more impossible task in what had already been a life full of impossible things? 

It was nothing. 

“What do you need me to do?” 

Stick laughed. It was a thin, unpleasant sound, but Matt thought he could hear genuine amusement in his voice when he said, “C’mon Matty, you’re gonna have to do better than that. What kind of test would it be if I just gave you the answer?”

-

A block and a world away, a star lay in a crater, dreaming for the first time in all its long centuries, entirely unaware of the story it had just fallen into.


	2. The Questing Beast

In those days Hell’s Kitchen was still what some referred to as a place between places. The reason for this was quite simple. It sat between the city of New York and the Land Far Away, and was regarded by folks of both realms as a place of total neutrality. 

The accident that had left Matt blind had taken place in those very streets, and his father had always believed there had been some magic in the substance that had burned away Matt’s sight.

If Matt had ever taken the chance to share his secret, Jack Murdock’s suspicions might have even been confirmed. Though what kind of magic could leave a boy blind while enhancing all his remaining senses without driving him to madness would have probably been beyond Jack’s ability to comprehend.

Stick, who had never felt compelled to share with Matt how he had come by his own gifts, scoffed at the use of magic, claiming it was for weaker minds that lacked the strength required to see a task through for themselves. While Matt did not entirely agree with his assessment of magic, he rarely sought magic out for himself, knowing how lowly Stick thought of it. He did not want that contempt associated with his own accomplishments. 

Now, charged with the task of finding a fallen star in order to complete his years of training without any instructions or restrictions as to how it was done, Matt walked the streets of Hell’s Kitchen in search of some way to do it. Stick had taught him that a true soldier was one who could use everything available to them as a weapon to their advantage.

It was with this thought in mind that Matt prodded his way through the winding collection of streets, the curbs piled high with garbage awaiting collection, the roads stalled to a standstill as cars honked and horse whinnied and drivers of all types yelled profanity at one another in a hundred different languages. 

His walking stick led the way with a scratching tap, polite people stepping aside to let him pass while less courteous persons were sharply whacked in the ankle and shin. Though he did not frequent those parts of Hell’s Kitchen often (at least not on ground level), Matt knew where his destination lay, could have found his way even if the streets were clogged with pedestrians, the usual combination of residents and tourists from outlying counties or states without border cities of their own.

In those days the beating heart of Hell’s Kitchen could still be found in Hell’s Kitchen Park, off West 48th street, and it was there that Matt hoped to find what he needed to accomplish his mission. 

Referring to the Muscari Market as a market was overly generous even then. It was still little more than an unlicensed collection of vendors, both magical and mundane, peddling their wares in untidy rows of tables and carts.

Matt waded through the violent tide of voices, men and women tempting shoppers with bargains on everything from power cords and designer purses to powdered mungworm root and shards of lightning. Someone with a particularly thick accent that Matt could not recognize as belonging to anyone human was trying to convince him he was in need of dragon-hide supplements to strengthen his eyes. 

It was then he first heard her song.

It was a high-pitched trill of a song, sweet but sad. It stabbed a thin needle of melancholy deep into the center of Matt’s heart and brought to mind the memory of his first grief: waking alone in the middle of the night, a child of five or six, in search of his father to sooth fear left in the wake of a nightmare, but finding no one in the apartment to comfort him. As though his father had known even then that his time with Matt was short, and was already taking steps to prepare him for the loneliness of loss.

The sound of this song shivered throughout Matt’s bones, rattled in his marrow, pulled from within him such reckless longing he was helpless to do anything other than to stand motionless in the middle of that jostling crowd and listen to it a while longer still. 

His final destination was still a ways further, but his feet seemed to move of their own volition, unable to stand idle a moment longer, the song a single vibrating thread pulling him closer and closer. It was hard to press through the slow moving shoppers, unhappy to be unceremoniously cut off in their path, but eventually his cane struck at the hollow leg of a table, set off a series of the delicate chimes, glass and crystal bobbles tipping against one another atop the table.

“Page! A customer!” Came a short bark from low on Matt’s left side. A man’s voice, oily and slick, the sound of it set Matt on edge.

The song stopped, though the final notes of it lingered in the air, rich as incense. Luckily that was the only acknowledgment he gave Matt before his chin dropped with a soft thunk against his chest and his breathing shifted, turned into deep-bellied snores that nearly drowned all else out.

There was a rustle, like a great wind curling over itself into a tight circle, a hurricane contained to a single spot, and Matt fought the urge to step back as a woman materialized seemingly out of thin air.

Though he could not see it, several other shoppers stopped to gawk as what had previously been a blue jay transformed into a woman. 

She was a slight creature, young still by the count of her people, all long willowy limbs and golden hair that hung down her back. The loveliness of her features was marred by the sadness of her blue eyes, though any who gazed on her long enough would have been fools to miss the resolve that lay barely hidden beneath her skin.

Her name, though long abused and ignored by those around her, was Karen.

She had been stolen by the man who called himself Owlsley, a cheap magician with dreams of grandeur, not long after she had run away from her father’s home, so many years ago now that she often had a difficult time recalling a life before this one. It was a ill-cast enchantment that had first transformed her into a bird, and only many fumbling attempts and consultations with other slightly wiser practitioners of the craft that had allowed her to transform back and forth between the two states. She was kept now out of a malicious desire for profit, a kind of living proof the Owl could trot out when trying to convince other patrons he was more than a hack.

She dreamt of escape, of flying away even if it meant living the rest of her days out as a bird. She had decided long ago it would be a better fate than this one, chained to a cage and brought forth only when it was time to impress customers, doomed to wait on Owlsley until his death broke his curse on her.

Karen studied the man who had approached the table. He was shorter than her even barefoot, his dark hair neatly combed though it was already beginning to rebel at the front. He wore glasses that flashed red under the street lamps and his lips were parted as though he had forgotten what he had meant to say after he’d begun to say it. In one hand he grasped the red handle of a white cane and Karen thought there might have been a time when she would have thought him handsome, before the long years of servitude had whittled her mind down to little more than the urge to escape. 

“Can I help you?” She asked, her voice flat and unfeeling, and though Matt could recognize notes of the songbird’s music in her words; there was no trace of sadness there. It was another emotion Matt heard, barely hidden by the thin veneer of apathy. Anger. An emotion Matt knew well. 

Matt licked his lips, unsure of what to say now that he was there. “I—do you sell birds?” He asked, feeling rather stupid. Stick had trained him in many forms of combat and Matt excelled in all of them, but he remained rather untrained in the ancient art of speaking to other people. 

The woman snorted, a quick joyless sound, and crossed her arms over her chest defensively with the soft clink of a bracelet. “Sorry, just me. And I’m _not_ for sale.” There was flint-edge there, and Matt felt color rise in his face at the thought that he might have offended her.

In his head he heard an unimpressed voice that was eerily similar to Stick’s telling him he didn’t have time to be ‘pussy-footing around’. He had a star to find, but her song still hummed through his veins, heavy with that ancient sadness known by many since the dawn of time.

“I—uh—I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—imply you were, I just—I heard singing, and I—I’m sorry.”

He seemed so genuinely thrown that Karen let her shoulders relax a bit, shook her head, “Are you looking to buy? The Owl doesn’t like people just looking around, so if you’re not interested in anything on the table I’d suggest you move along.”

Matt scratched at his jaw, trying to collect himself after their rather disastrous start. He certainly didn’t mean to buy anything from any table at the market, his real destination still waiting for him at the opposite end of the park.

Perhaps it was the after effects of her song or his own intrigue at her barely banked fury, but for whatever reason Matt felt compelled to make amends to this woman. He tapped the side of his glasses. “Don’t worry I’ve never been accused of browsing.” He said, trying to lighten the mood between them.

There was a second of silence as the woman put two and two together and then she inhaled. “Oh fuck. Now _I’m_ sorry.” It sounded vaguely accusatory, like Matt had willingly kept the information from her. 

“Don’t worry I’ve heard worse.” Matt said with a small grin and he heard the steady measure of her heart stutter in the middle. He held out his hand towards her, “I’m Matt by the way.”

When he smiled at her it became apparent that he wasn’t a man at all. Karen blinked at him, and saw, for the first time, that he was barely more than a boy. She wondered if he had magic of his own, or if it was the certainty with which he held himself, as though his feet were firmly planted in the ground and nothing could shake him unless he allowed it, that made him appear older. 

Karen couldn’t remember the last time someone had offered her their hand in greeting, but she didn’t hesitate then, slipped her own hand into Matt’s and shook it firmly. “Karen.” She said, delighting in the simple pleasure of introducing herself. Matt nodded, his voice kind when he said, “You have a beautiful voice, Karen.” 

It was as though the act of hearing her own name in someone else’s mouth snapped something inside her, twisted the neck of the animal that had kept watch over her desire to exist, not only in order to escape, but to live her own life for herself.

Of all the different kinds of magic that have existed in the world, kindness is one of the most ancient, and the strongest. 

At that moment, however, kindness was the farthest thing from Matt’s mind. In shaking Karen’s hand he became aware that what he had originally interpreted as a bracelet was in fact something else entirely. In extending her arm Karen had shaken the long thin chain that ran from her wrist to the cage that acted as her perch when she was a bird.

The chain had been forged by dwarves deep in the dark heart of the purple mountains in the Land Far Away; and their enchantments lay thick on the steel to ensure it would never break. It could stretch to incredible lengths or shrink to fit around even the smallest captive. It had been made to withstand flame, blade, and brute force. Nothing Karen had tried to date had left so much as a scratch on the metal. If she hated Owlsley (and she did), she hated that chain even more. 

Matt’s fingertips grazed the chain that slid down to the base of her hand, unnaturally cold despite the warmth that radiated from Karen’s skin. It seemed to vibrate with an energy all its own, and Matt thought he heard it hiss when he touched it to test its hold. 

“It’s unbreakable.” Karen said, as though she read his mind. She could feel the chain shrinking around her wrist, biting into her skin as it did whenever it could sense a person’s intention to remove it.

Yes, she thought looking down at the overlapping pattern of thin white scars the chain had furrowed into her skin over the years, she hated the chain most of all. 

Matt’s mouth turned down, his brow pinched. “He’s keeping you against your will?” He was young, Karen thought to herself, taking in his genuine disbelief at the thought, “The law—”

“Can’t stop him.” She replied, “He’s too careful. We’re never on this side long enough for your authorities to intervene and people on the other side—” She stopped short and Matt heard her hair shift over her shoulder as she turned to look at the man who was still snoring a few feet away. 

“He’s asleep.” Matt said, trying to reassure her, listening to the deep and easy rhythm of Owlsley’s breathing that few had ever been able to fake convincingly enough to fool Matt for this long.

Karen dropped her voice regardless, leaned forward, “No one will ever speak against him on the other side.” The anger was still present in her voice, but there was fear there too, the first Matt had heard since their conversation began. “His employer isn’t the kind of man you stand up to. You’re better off keeping your head down and hoping he doesn’t know you exist.”

-

Owlsley employer was the subject of much gossip and rumor in the Land Far Away. What his true name was no one knew anymore, it had been lost to the annuals of time immemorial, and he was known in those days only by the sobriquet that had been given to him by some underlingly or other. It’s origins had been forgotten now, whatever the root inconsequential compared to the idea of the man it represented. He was alike to one of the great spiders of the north, a menacing shadow lying in wait in its cave, spinning webs and biding its time until some unlucky creature had fallen into its trap. 

His threads ran far and held together many in the Land Far Away, some of his poisonous chords flung to such great distances that those who feared him knew that not even the Other Side was safe from his devices. Even his friends knew better than to think themselves safe, for a spider will eat whatever meat is nearest, whatever it be.

Only a few dared risk invoking him by uttering his name, and even Karen, in her anger and hate, braved it only in her head.

In those days the name _Kingpin_ was whispered as cautiously as a curse, in dark rooms, between strangers, eyes cast towards nearby shadows waiting for attack.

-

Matt listened carefully as Karen recounted her tale, one ear always tuned towards Owlsley lest he wake and hear them. But the man slept on ignorantly and the other shoppers at the market ignored them entirely, pushing pass Matt without a word.

By the end of it Matt could barely restrain the urge to leap over the table and beat the man into the ground. Karen was bound to him until Owlsley released her willingly or he died, though she scornfully informed him that she wasn’t waiting for either anymore.

“I can help you,” Matt said, taking Karen’s hand again, inciting a soft gasp from her. “I could—I could—” He stuttered worse than he wished, the word kill sharp and cold on his tongue. Stick wouldn’t disapprove, it was what he’d been preparing Matt for all these years. Stick said there had to be causalities in every battle, that Matt couldn’t adhere to his father’s old dogmas if he intended to win the war that was coming.

“You can’t.” Karen said, voice sharp, pulling her hand free of Matt’s with a hard tug, “Do you think I haven’t tried to kill him myself? He’s thought of _everything_. If I kill him or have someone kill him for me this thing,” she shook the chain, “will kill me too.”

Matt’s mouth hardened, his handsome face greyed by the severity of his expression. Karen took a step back, arms once more rising over her rushing heart. She didn’t need a foolhearty knight to run to her defense.

Matt’s lips twisted, and all at once transformed, though something feral remained around the corners of his grin when he said, “What about a trade?”

Karen pinched the links of the chain between her fingers, imagined she could feel them vibrate against her skin. “No offense, but you strike me as the type who’d have something to bargain with.” He wouldn’t—Karen brushed the thought away. No stranger had ever offered to take her place. Besides, Matt didn’t scream roadside attraction anyhow.

Matt tapped his cane against the ground, “Not yet, but I will. Soon. And if its as rare as people say these things are, well, even the Owl wouldn’t turn it down.”

Stick would have swung at Matt if he’d been at the market that day, would have called him every kind of idiot he could think of to hear Matt tell Karen what he meant to do.

Karen’s eyes grew wide as Matt spoke, her heart hastening its pace even as Matt said, “I’ll come back then and make the trade. If Owlsley has any sense, he’ll take it.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Karen whispered.

“Then I’ll convince him.” Matt said simply, that animal ferocity shining in his face.

“Wait,” Karen said softly, her fingers squeezing at Matt’s palm. “Take this.” She pressed something into his palm. 

“What is it?” He asked, rubbing his finger over the object she’d placed in his hand. It was made of glass, though it seemed to warm at his touch, shivered in his hand like a blade of grass caught in the wind. 

“Foxglove—sorry,um, it’s a flower.”

The last girl who had given him a flower had gone on to push him from a rooftop and there was a part of him waiting for Karen to strike. She didn’t. Instead she watched him patiently while he investigated with his fingers. It didn’t feel like any flower Matt had ever touched or remembered seeing in his youth, a short stem stripped of leaves, a delicate cluster of downturned trumpets adorning its crown. “Won’t you get in trouble for giving this away?”

Karen shrugged. “Probably.”

“What do these go for? I could pay for it.” Though the thought of putting money in Owlsley’s pocket turned his stomach, it was better than getting Karen in trouble. 

Karen clasped her fingers around his so hard that the flowers dug into his palm sharply enough to sting. “I’ll trade you for it.” She said, and Matt could hear Stick in his head, telling him off for wanting to play the hero, for trusting an other-worlder on nothing more than her word, for entering a bargain without knowing the terms and conditions. “Anything.”

Karen’s fingers shook but her voice was cool as marble and just as hard. “Remember me. That’s all I ask for in exchange, remember me as more than this chain. As a person.” It had been a long time since Karen had asked anyone, not even herself, to try. It was terrifying. 

Matt nodded, crushed their hands together around the glass flower, her hands still trembling between his palms. “I will Karen. I promise.” He said. Between their clasped hands the flower almost sang. 

-

He was reluctant to go, but the crowds were beginning to thin and Karen said that soon Owlsley would wake. If he saw Matt still there he might grow suspicious. It was only at Karen’s insistence that Matt left. Had he been able to he would have looked back as he went, but as he couldn’t, he listened to the sound of her heart until it disappeared, lost in a gust of wind that disturbed the otherwise still dusk, and was replaced by a mournful birdsong. Matt couldn’t understand it but he thought that perhaps she was saying goodbye. 

It was late now, later than he had intended when he’d first set out for the market in Hell’s Kitchen, and there was part of him that now felt the urgency of his impending quest more fiercely than even before. Matt quickened his steps, hoping fervently that he wasn’t too late.

The star had fallen hours ago and there was no way of knowing where it had landed, only that he needed to find it to complete his training. And now, to free Karen as well. 

-

What the true history of the Babylon candle had been lost centuries before that rain-damp day in October when Matt approached Father Lantom at Saint Agnes in the borderland of Hell’s Kitchen. Church historians had been debating the truth of its origins for nearly as long, pouring over their tomes of sacred scripture in search of clues that might tell them how they had come into the world. Their use was the cause of two major rifts in the Church, with various Protestant groups citing their continued creation as proof of the Church’s fallacy. 

How Father Lantom had come into singular possession of this candle was a story all its own and not one that could be told to its full extent in this one. What mattered was only that Father Lantom was one of the rare few to have access to a Babylon candle on that side of the Atlantic in that day and age, and that it was that very candle that Matt now required use of.

He listened to Matt’s story with the same patience he extended during the sacrament of confession, allowing Matt to tell him his abridged, and at time vague, truth until he finally reiterated his request. Though he knew few of the concrete details of Matt’s life since he’d gone to live with his grandmother, he knew enough to piece together an idea of what his life was now.

Over the years he’d seen Matt in various states, most of them injured in some capacity. The boy had always denied any allegations of abuse and, until recently, had even denied Father Lantom’s offers to help. He spoke fiercely about a desire to help people, to protect them from the inflictions of an unfair world. His battles were both literal and figurative in nature, and Father Lantom carried within himself a deep abiding worry for Matt’s wellbeing.

“Please Father,” Matthew asked him again, brows pinched over the wire rims of his glasses, “I need to do this. And this is the only way.”

Paul Lantom’s life contained mysteries and miracles alike. He had taken holy orders nearly forty years before, and could, some days, conjure the memory of Matthew Michael Murdock, swaddled in white, presented before the altar as an infant. A fussy thing, he’d thought him, wailing through the prayers that initiated him into the body of the Church. More clearly still he could remember him as a boy, standing in shocked silence at his father’s graveside. There were other memories too, Matt attending Mass at his grandmother’s side, the pale sorrow and half-hidden wrath he carried with him into young adulthood.

Yet in all those years, this was the first memory Father Lantom had of Matthew asking anything of him.

He took a deep breath. “On one condition, Matthew,” he extended his hand and waited for Matthew to reach for it as he had countless other times without explanation. “You will bring yourself home safely, and tell me everything.” Matthew’s face, so young and yet already heavy with trouble, smoothed, his features transformed with relief as he slid his hand into Paul’s.

“Deal.”

-

A world away but a block closer the star was still dreaming. 

Time moved different in the Land Far Away. It was hard to say how, only that it did, the gears of that world turning slowly, dragging out the hours of a day so that a single day might pass in that world while years could come and go in ours. 

So that while Matt had been given his task and set out in search of a Babylon candle and met Karen and given her his word, the star had not even woken from its slumber. This propensity for sleep could not be held against it, of course. It had traveled a long way to Earth and crashed very hard. It had every reason to be tired. 

And though it didn’t know it yet, it was already moments away from being embroiled in a tangled quest the likes of which it could scarcely have imagined for itself while he was still only an onlooker in the sky.

It would need all the rest it could get before then. 

-

Matt’s last impression of his own world was gradually increasing sound of the foot traffic out on the side walk, the smell of candle wax, the impression of sunlight coming in through the ever-still images of saints captured in stain glass. Father Lantom blessed him with the sign of the cross and bid him good journey before striking a match. Then there was the pungent aroma of burning fat and a sharp pull that seemed to begin right behind Matt’s navel, which yanked him forward. 

In the centuries since its inception, the few who had had the opportunity to travel by Babylon candle had attempted to describe the experience. If Matt had ever offered his own experience he would have said: It was like being suspended in that first moment after leaping off a rooftop. 

The first time he’d ever done it he’s stood frozen at the building’s ledge, legs shaking as he stared sightlessly down into the yawning abyss between two buildings. Stick had already leapt ahead before him, had turned back and taunted him for stalling.

“You’re either gonna fall or stick the landing, Matty. Keeping still ain’t an option.”

He’d been thirteen, growing into gangly limbs and a profound sense of longing that would never go away, only intensify the older he became, but the fear of being left behind had outweighed the fear of falling and he’d kicked off the rooftop hard, leapt forward and hoped the night would catch him.

He had landed, of course he had, this would be a rather different story if he hadn’t.

(And if he hadn’t jumped at all you might wonder, what sort of story would it have been then? What kind of boy would Matt Murdock have grown up to be? A different one no doubt, but his story is for another telling). 

What mattered most to Matt in the aftermath of that jump was not that he had survived it, but the act of jumping itself, the exhilarating thrill of leaving everything behind him, the wind howling past him as he hurdled towards something unknown in the dark, carrying nothing but himself. 

It was the single embodiment of a lesson that Matt would not understand for years: Stick could be wrong. 

In jumping there was more than falling or landing. There was flying, always, for a single perfect moment that could never last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and thank you for taking the time to leave a review!


	3. A Fly By Night

This was the star’s first conscious thought upon waking on our planet:

“Ow.”

He blinked his eyes and squinted _up_ at the night sky for the first time in his life. The sky, dark and speckled with other stars he knew well, looked small from his position lying flat at the bottom of a crater on the Earth. He hadn’t known that was possible.

The wonder of the sight was very nearly enough to make him forget about his leg—for he had a leg now—but not quite, and the longer he lay there the more terrible the hurt intensified. The leg, he discovered upon attempting to move, was in fact attached to an entire body, all fleshy and soft and bruised. He ached as never before and he could not make up his mind about whether it was alright to marvel, just a little, at his misfortune.

The truth was that beneath the pain and the ache and the disorienting distance from the sky, the star felt incredible excitement. It wasn’t often those of his kind fell loose from their celestial places. There were stories of course, from long before his time, of Elder Stars stepping down from the sky and taking foreign forms, but all those tales seemed to end in one tragedy or another. Regardless, it would be a lie to say this star hadn’t dreamt of adventure, something as exciting as the song of Gilda the Bright or Quyn the Bold. His sisters and brothers would often chide him for his flights of fancy, telling him he’d shine brighter if he spent less of his time with his thoughts below the clouds. 

He had only just begun to consider what sort of tale might be told about him one day when his thoughts were rudely interrupted when another body materialized out of thin air and crashed directly atop him.

“Ow.” The star thought, sincerely hoping it wasn’t the beginning of a pattern.

The man leapt to his feet with a graceful twist of his body. He fixed his glasses, which had been knocked askew in their tumble

though the star couldn’t understand why he needed to; the night was a lovely velvety blue-black, the moon bathed everything in soft silver light. 

“Sorry about that—uh, rough landing.”

He was clutching something in his right hand, which he quickly thrust into the pocket of his coat before falling silent for a long moment. 

Matt took a deep breath (tree sap, pine, dirt, moss, a menagerie of animals that weren’t rats or possums or raccoons, and over all of it the heavy smell of burnt ozone). There were only two heartbeats for miles in any direction. His and the one belonging to the person he’d crashed into. They were below ground level, in some kind of ravine from the sound of it, the ground beneath Matt’s boots packed hard and sturdy. 

He tried to quell the deep—and frankly, well founded—feeling of disorientation that rose up inside him. This is wasn’t the city. And it was hard to say how far the Babylon candle had taken him, let alone _where_ it had taken him. He tried to focus on the wind rustling through the trees and tried to gauge distance and direction, ground himself in every detail available to him. 

This is what Stick had been preparing him for. This was his final test. 

He wouldn’t fail. He couldn’t.

The person he’d crashed into hadn’t made any attempt to get off the ground yet, and Matt listened to their thin, uneven breathing, their ricocheting heartbeat, flighty and quick as a bird. The smell of burnt ozone got stronger when Matt stepped closer, as did the flicker of their pulse. Matt wished he could decipher if it was pain or fear or anger he was listening to. Most likely it was a mixture of all three. 

“I’m sorry,” Matt apologized again, offering his hand to help him up, “Are you hurt? 

The man groaned as he got to his feet, took a few careful steps away. Matt could hear the unevenness in his gait, deduced that he was favoring his left side. “Is it your ribs? Or—is,” Matt listened, the sandpaper grind of bone shifting against bone whenever he moved. The right leg. His ribs were probably only bruised, though how badly was hard to tell. He did a quick inventory of what he had in his pack in order to determine if he could put together a makeshift splint before trying to get them out of this ditch. If the Babylon candle had brought him here the star must be nearby. Perhaps the man had seen it too, or knew where it had fallen. If Matt could help him, he might feel more inclined to answer Matt’s questions despite their abrupt introduction. Matt took a step forward, hand extended palm up to show he meant no harm. The other man took another limping step back. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Matt said for good measure. 

The man’s snort was undercut by a coughing fit. “Sorry if I have a hard time taking your word for it.” His voice was a rough rasp, like he hadn’t used it in a while. Matt wondered how long he’d been lying in the ditch, injured and calling for help without anyone to hear him before he’d finally given up. 

“I’m sorry if I hurt you, I didn’t mean to.” He didn’t drop his palm but he eased back an inch, relaxed his shoulders and kept his face soft and his voice gentle. “I was looking for something and wound up here. It’s, uh, hard to explain…You’re hurt though and I want to help you, if that’s alright?” 

He listened to the other man’s breathing, measured his heart, his body temperature to gauge whether or not he was going to trust Matt at all. (If push came to shove Matt was fairly certain he could carry him out of here, though he hoped it didn’t come to that.)

“If you’re offering,” The other man said with careful deliberation, “I guess it’s the least you could do.”

Stick wasn’t here. He wouldn’t have to know if Matt took some time to help a stranger before beginning his quest. Matt smiled. He shrugged off his pack and dug out the small first aid kit he’d brought with him and two batons. With a bandage he secured the batons to the man’s leg, fashioning a crude splint. It would do for the time being and hopefully they’d be able to find help so that he could get actual medical treatment. “Thank you Matt.” The man said, sounding a little better now, though he was by no means at ease.

Matt nodded. “Like you said, it was the least I could do…sorry, I didn’t get your name.” 

“I didn’t give it.” the other man said, a touch of amusement bleeding into his voice. “You can call me Foggy.”

Matt hoped his face didn’t look as critical as the disembodied Stick voice in his head sounded. “Foggy?”

Foggy shrugged and then winced in regret. On Earth—though he didn’t know it—he had been a part of a constellation astronomers called the Butcher’s Arm, but among his siblings he had been Foggy for as far back as he could remember, having earned the name on account of how weakly he shined compared to those around him. “Men who appear out of thin air shouldn’t throw stones. Or something.” He said, looking down at his newly bound leg. 

Matt grinned sheepishly, rising to his feet. “You’ve got me there.” He tilted his head a bit, looking pensive. “Foggy, uh, do you think you could help me with something?”

“And he asks for favors.” Foggy sighed, accepting Matt’s hand again so he could ease himself upright. It still hurt, a lot, but he could at least move a bit easier now.

Matt exhaled a weak chuckle. “Sorry, I just—guess you could say I’m new here. Can you—what do you see exactly?”

Foggy’s brow furrowed at the odd question but he craned his neck regardless, looking all around them as best he could. “Not much to see, really. We’re in a hole. The moon’s full. The stars are pretty.” He refrained from shrugging again. “Pretty sure there are trees up there. At least from what I saw on my way down.”

The visual aesthetics of the night weren’t necessarily helpful to Matt, but Foggy confirmed what Matt could hear and smell, they were definitely somewhere wooded, a forest somewhere. Nowhere near the city from the sound of it. 

Matt reached out and felt the sides of the ditch for himself, he could make his way out easily enough, but he’d have to be creative if he was going to get Foggy out given his injuries.

“Um,” Matt said, dropping to one knee so he could stow the remains of the Babylon candle away at the bottom of his pack and pull free a length of rope. “I’m going to ask you to trust if, if you can.”

There was something to Foggy’s heart, a curious thrum that Matt couldn’t quite place, and Foggy’s voice after, words bright with humor. “I’m not really in a position to do much else.”

Matt smiled back, relieved he didn’t have to convince Foggy he was trying to help. Not everyone responded as well to a stranger dropping out of the dark, which, while understandable, did nothing to persuade Matt away from Stick’s line of thinking. Us and them. Warriors in the dark versus sheep in the light of day.

He maneuvered quickly after that, and there was a low impressed whistle from Foggy’s direction as he watched Matt kick off one wall of the ditch hard enough he could leap upward and grab the edge, pulling himself upward and free.

“Grab onto this, I’m going to pull you up.” Matt called back, tossing one end of the rope back into the hole and waiting for it to go taut with Foggy’s weight.

It wasn’t until Foggy was sitting on the ledge of the ditch, thanking Matt for the assistance that Matt first noticed their surroundings.

They were alone, as Matt first determined, only animals off in the distance. The far distance. Even the wind in the trees was far off, the area most immediately around them cluttered with debris that seemed to radiate outward until it started to distort, knocking abruptly into the forest standing at the perimeters.

There was the smell of ozone still, and burnt tinder, and Matt knew the star had been here, or perhaps was close by still. But he couldn’t leave Foggy here while he investigated, and Foggy could hardly tag along in his state. He would have to get Foggy somewhere safe first, then double back here to begin his search. Stick would never have to know about this detour, he told himself, and it certainly wouldn’t matter once he’d found it and brought it back.

“Do you know this area at all?” Matt asked, shouldering his pack again, fairly content with his plan of action as only those who believe they are getting away with something are.

Foggy looked up and then around. “I think I saw lights that way,” He lifted his arm and pointed towards the right, “But I was falling pretty fast, it’s hard to say.”

Matt started them in the direction Foggy had indicated, keeping their steps slow on account of Foggy’s injuries. They covered a short distance in relative silence, nothing but their breathing and the occasional hiss of discomfort from Foggy at Matt’s side. He was incredibly warm against Matt, warding off the chill in the air. Matt began to sweat before long, though he thought it might have as much to do with supporting Foggy’s weight and focusing on the terrain as it did with the heat radiating off Foggy’s body. His sweaty palm slid over the slippery material covering Foggy’s back, something silky and nearly fluid, like nothing Matt had touched before. Foggy himself smelled like a campfire, a car engine, a smokehouse and a the steam that rose out of the city concrete on the coldest winter mornings, almost as incomprehensible to Matt’s mind as the slippery material under his hand. 

At last, when Matt couldn’t ignore his curiosity a moment longer, he asked, “Were you attacked?”

Foggy nodded, sucked in a deep breath and took another careful step forward. “Can you believe it? You come out, do your thing and wham! Get knocked straight down without so much as a how do you do.” 

Matt frowned. “Did you see who did it?” 

Foggy shook his head. “Not really. But whoever it was has terrible taste in jewelry. They left me this.” Foggy held up a rather ugly pendant he’d found wrapped around his leg when he woke. It was a brilliant opal, glittering as brightly as any star in the moonlight, weighed down heavily by ornate metalwork that added nothing to the magnificence of the natural stone.

Foggy was sure the impact of the stupid thing had hurt him more than his tumble to Earth. 

Matt’s frown deepened, even more confused by this new development in Foggy’s story. “That was thoughtful of them.”

Foggy hmmed, low in his throat. They fell silent once more. 

They’d walked almost ten minutes when Foggy asked, “So are you a wizard or something?”

“Huh?”

“You know with the whole, ‘ _poof_ ’ teleportation thing, I’m sort of thinking you’re a wizard. I’ve never seen one up close before though, so it’s hard to tell.”

That provoked a full laugh from Matt and they had to stop walking so that his laughter didn’t jostle Foggy’s bruised ribs. “No I’m not a wizard. I don’t have any magic at all. I promise. I’m just…Matt.” 

“Well, Just Matt, do you travel everywhere by landing on people?” Foggy asked, clearly skeptical and little amused. Matt shook his head, taking Foggy’s arm over his shoulders again so they could resume walking. “No, that was a first. Sorry about it. Again. I didn’t know that would happen. I was searching for something and…well I found you instead.”

“Was it tacky jewelry?”

Matt chuckled, “No. Though, I thought, you might have seen it, maybe. At least I was hoping you had.”

“Well,” Foggy replied, still glancing down at his feet every other step, “I saw a lot on my way down so maybe I did. Shoot.”

“You’re going to think this is crazy—I know I did—but do you remember seeing a star before? It would have been falling.”

Foggy’s breathing sputtered into a breathless giggle, “What are the odds, pal? Turns out I can help you after all!”

Matt stopped them both in their tracks, “Really?”

“Yes! You were looking for a star?” Foggy hobbled a little to the side. He held his arms out at his sides. “Well you’re looking at him.”

Matt’s face was awash with confusion. “You’re a star?”

“Ouch. No need to sound so unconvinced. I assure you I’m brilliant. Sometimes even radiant, if the mood strikes me.”

“But…how?”

Foggy shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, buddy. I was up there, minding my own business, and then pow! I’m falling right out of the sky and crashing on to this teeny blue planet you call home.”

Matt scratched at his head. _Well fuck_ , he thought, _this complicates things_.

(The Stick-sounding voice in his head laughed.)

“So that’s me.” Foggy said with a genial good-humor that Matt would come to recognize as quintessentially Foggy. “What’s your story?”

At that moment there were no less than twelve different things Matt could have done. Maybe even fourteen if he were being especially creative. And Matt Murdock, son of the late Battlin’ Jack Murdock, Stick’s pupil and his grandmother’s bane, did none of them.

He was, as a result of his tragic childhood and the lessons he’d learned under Stick’s tutelage—which were themselves an extension of that misfortune that had happened upon Matt from his earliest memories—what lay scholars of the time referred to as a human disaster.

Foggy waited in patient silence while Matt’s mind was busy at work.

Stick had always preached secrecy.

Foggy was not Father Lantom, a man who had earned Matt’s trust over the course of years, but even Matt could recognize that there wasn’t time for that. Foggy had not hesitated to confide in Matt, though that might have been because Foggy hadn’t thought of it as confiding.

As a star, he had always been privy to the secrets and wishes of others, and now that the chance had made itself available, he saw no reason to do the same.

Matt chewed on the inside of his lip. If he told Foggy the truth, the whole truth, about Stick’s request, would he refuse to accompany Matt any further? Matt couldn’t, wouldn’t drag Foggy anywhere without his consent. He’d be no better than Owlsley or any of the other magic hawkers who skirted the law.

But now he was here, with only half a Babylon Candle left and that he needed to return to Hell’s Kitchen for Karen’s freedom (he’d find a way to take it back from Owlsley, just as he would ensure that the man’s cruelty didn’t go unpunished).

Could he leave Foggy here, wherever here was? Foggy would be alone then and still injured. Was he stranded here, out of sky now that he’d fallen? Did he want to go home? Was he allowed?

He wanted to ask but was almost afraid of the answer. What little Matt knew of falling celestial bodies rarely involved returning home.

He felt, as he had countless times before, frozen in place, stuck in his own confusion and indecision. _You can’t be everyone’s hero, Matty_ , Stick had warned him once, when he first found out Matt was going out at night to stop muggers and petty thieves.

But here Matt was talking to an actual star. Who could tell Matt what was truly impossible.

Stick had asked Matt to bring him a star. If Matt could get them both to back to Hell’s Kitchen, he would have done that much. Stick would realize that Foggy couldn’t stay, not if he didn’t want to, and maybe, maybe he might be able to help Matt get him back in the sky.

Matt could help Foggy and help Karen and help himself, he could, he knew he could, if he just did this right.

-

There would always be a part of Matt that believed, if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would never again choose to do what he did next.

He opened his mouth and he lied.

The science of lying was one Matt knew well. Stick had taught him how to read guilt in people’s bodies, a fidgeting finger or bouncing knee, the tug of an earlobe, or a prolonged pause. Matt could pick out a lie in the way sweat gathered under someone’s arms or between their shoulder blades, the way their blood quickened in their veins, how their heart thumped irregularly, thrown off its steady rhythm.

But Foggy, who had only seen humans from afar, didn’t know any of that any more than he could hear the rapidly increasing tempo of Matt’s own heart behind his sternum.

-

Unbeknownst to our two companions, Stick was not the only person aware of the significance of a falling star. 

The heavens were closely watched at all hours for just such an event, and when it occurred, word traveled quickly as wild fire through the circles of those individuals who vested great interest in such happenings. 

The man who was then known only as the Kingpin was one of these individuals. It had been many long years since he’d last set foot outside the impenetrable walls of his manor, which was perched high above the moorlands at the west end of the Land Far Away. His was a chiefly estate, the grounds a series of meticulously kept gardens, full of rare plants and strange fruits, his home closely guarded by well-trained soldiers who would willingly lay down their own lives at a word from their employer. 

Rumor said that none who had crossed the threshold of his home had ever left in any state to tell others what it was he kept there. He was a man who wore his secrecy as a form of armor. Hidden in the shadows, his reach extended far beyond the borders of his land, his presence carried out into the world in the minds of men who cowered at the thought of his wrath.

Secluded as he was the Kingpin was not, in fact, alone. He shared his home with two others, perhaps the only two left in the wide world that knew him as anything other than a dreaded name. These two companions were shrouded in as much mystery as the man himself. Who they had been before they went there, what they had dreamt of in the bygone days of their youth, where their homes had once stood or if any ever thought of them and wondered what had become of them, none could say. 

The man, we shall call him Wesley, was of indeterminable age, with nondescript features and a bland persona. He was a man born to be forgotten, quiet and unimposing except for when he wished to make an impression, though when he did it was never on his own behalf. He carried out the will of his employer to the greatest degree, dark, unpleasant tasks that had long since lost all gruesomeness to him. The woman, we shall call her Vanessa, was beautiful. It was not her face that made her beautiful, but rather the secrets she withheld at the corners of her smile, the mischief she promised with a glance, the laughter that seemed always a second away and was ever the more tantalizing for the wait that made her magnificent. She carried herself with an air of upmost refinement and civility, but all she needed was a harsh glance to silence any foolish enough to underestimate her. She could dismantle lesser men with no more than a blink. 

These two people the Kingpin had taken into his confidence long before his true name had been forgotten by the minds of those who ran from and to hm. And of all the people who scratched their existence out of the unforgiving earth, these two were the most important to him.

Of the Kingpin himself we will learn more later. For now know only this: He was a man. And he was not alone. 

-

“ _So_ …” Foggy said slowly, still piecing together the loose bits and pieces of Matt’s fairly incredibly tale. “There’s a bird, but she’s really a lady. And you have to save her to prove yourself to your…ninja teacher? That’s—yeah, no, that’s sort of antiquated. Not that helping people goes out of fashion or anything it’s just, why doesn’t he just saved her himself? Or like, what happens if you fail? Does she just stay an unwilling servant to this creep until the next trainee comes along?”

To his credit Matt’s face remained relatively blank throughout the onslaught of Foggy’s questions (if inside he was writhing with panic that was strictly between him and his maker).

“Who knows.” He shrugged his shoulders loose, tried to muster his former confidence, “I don’t plan to fail.”

Foggy rolled his eyes. “No one actually plans to fail Matthew. You think Napoleon woke up at Waterloo and said, ‘Nevermind, don’t think I’ll try that hard today?’ because let me tell you, buddy, he did not.”

Matt chuckled, at ease again since Foggy hadn’t immediately rejected him or his slightly modified version of events. “Napoleon? What do you know about Napoleon?”

Foggy shrugged. Then winced. Partially from the pain he set off throughout his back and partially because Matt couldn’t actually _see_ him, as he now knew. “Sorry, um, I shrugged. I was trying to be aloof and mysterious.” Somehow, out of everything Matt had just told him—about his senses, and his training, and his quest, he was having the hardest time reconciling the idea that Matt was blind and yet more than capable of navigating the world as Foggy had already witnessed for himself. 

Matt laughed out right. “I don’t think you have to worry on either of those fronts, buddy.”

Foggy grinned at the name but kept that fact to himself. He’d never had a friend before. Sisters and brothers aplenty but a friend. Matt could be the first.

Even in the near darkness of the forested road Matt’s face was undeniably a nice one, made much more appealing when he smiled in Foggy’s direction. His dark hair was falling over his forehead and he pushed it to one side, smudging even more dirt on his face in the process.

Later, in more gallant fits of high romance, Foggy would say that was the moment in which it had all been lost for him.

Without the thin veneer of nostalgia yet installed, Foggy only thought that Matt would do well to smile frequently.

He didn’t know it, not really, but something told him Matt didn’t often practice the act. And that, he was sure, was a pity.

Foggy blew out a low breath. “Right—so that’s you then.” He studied Matt for another stolen second before carrying on to the next pressing task.

As it stood between them, they had whatever Matt had thought fit to pack in his backpack, the awful bauble that had knocked Foggy out of the sky, and three working legs. Neither of them had an idea of where they were, or how to get to where they had to go, Matt’s oddly named city of Hell’s Kitchen.

They were lost, and what’s more, they were both of them without any help but each other.


End file.
